Arthur Weasley With Imperius -- Now, With New Canon! (LONG)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 40168

This message contains much reprise of my pet "Arthur Weasley With 
Imperius" speculation.  It also, however, includes some brand new 
material, which can be found towards the end of the defense.

-----

Massive Road Trauma (Gee, that's a bummer -- hope it gets better) 
wrote:

> My apologies if this has been discussed before.

> I was re-reading Goblet of Fire last night, and came across a chunk 
> of text that jumped out of me (although maybe after reading this 
> board for too long, I'm *looking* for subtext).

Hey, if you don't take that Egg under the surface of the water, then 
how are you ever going to be able to understand what it's really 
trying to tell you?

Subtext is good.  We like subtext.  ;-)

MRT, you have made my day.  "Imperio'd Arthur Weasley" is one of my
all-time *favorite* pet theories (see messages #37121, 34232), and 
learning that somebody else was struck by the possibility upon 
reading GoF (even while out on a subtext hunt) makes me *so* happy, 
because if someone else saw it there without prompting...why, then it 
just *must* be true!  

Right?  Right?

Here is my defense for the notion that poor Arthur Weasley was indeed 
a victim of the Imperius Curse at some point in time during 
Voldemort's first rise to power.  Much of this has been snipped from 
previous posts on the subject, but I've now added Yet More Canon, for 
those who like their speculations crunchy and wholesome and 
nutritious.

-----

Canonical evidence for Arthur Weasley With Imperius


1) Evidence that there were many genuine victims of the Imperius 
Curse.

I believe that there were indeed at least a *few* wizards who really 
were placed under the Imperius Curse against their will during 
Voldemort's first rise (rather than just claiming that they had been 
to escape punishment for their crimes). 

In the Pensieve chapter of GoF, Karkaroff names Mulciber: "he 
specialized in the Imperius Curse, forced countless people to do 
horrific things!" 

In Chapter Four of PS, Hagrid tells Harry that after Voldemort's 
disappearance: "People who was on his side came back ter ours. Some 
of 'em came outta kinda trances. Don' reckon they could've done if he 
was coming back." Nor do I think that Hagrid is talking about the 
likes of Lucius Malfoy: Hagrid seems steadfastly unimpressed with the 
Malfoys and their claims of innocence. 

Crouch/Moody supports this assertion in Chapter 14 of GoF: "Years 
back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the 
Imperius Curse. . . .Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out 
who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free 
will."

When talking to Harry about the dark days of Voldemort's rise, both 
Hagrid and Sirius emphasize the difficulties of knowing who could 
really be trusted. This is consistent with a situation in which a 
number of people are not only turning traitor willingly, like 
Pettigrew, but also being manipulated against their own volition.

Canon has also provided us with examples of people being so 
manipulated.  The unfortunate Elder Crouch suffers under the Imperius 
through most of GoF.  During the Third Task, poor Viktor Krum is not 
only placed under it, but also forced to cast *Cruciatus* while under 
its influence.  We have been given hard evidence to support both the 
truth of the assertion that the curse is indeed difficult to resist 
*and* the implication that one can be forced to act very much against 
ones own inclinations or desires while under its control.

So although nearly everyone we have seen who claims to have been a 
victim of the Imperius Curse in canon has been lying, I nonetheless 
believe that there were quite a number of genuine victims of the 
curse during Voldemort's first rise to power.


2) Targetting of younger ministry officials as part of the Death 
Eater modus operandi

We already know that Voldemort had an interest in infiltrating the 
Ministry. Rookwood of the Department of Mysteries was the big fish 
that Karkaroff was able to offer up as part of his plea bargain in 
the Pensieve scene.

We also know that Voldemort's organization sought to make use of the
ministry's younger and more vulnerable workers, people who had access 
to documentation but were not likely to be under very close 
supervision.  We see evidence of that in Ludo Bagman's trial, also in 
the Pensieve chapter.

It seems quite likely to me that they would have achieved this end not
only by deceiving the gullible (as with Bagman), but also through 
judicious use of the Imperius Curse. In fact, Crouch/Moody implies as 
much in Chapter 14 of GoF, when he says: "Gave the Ministry a lot of 
trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse."

At the time of Voldemort's first rise, Arthur Weasley would have been 
a relatively young and likely low-ranked ministry official: precisely 
the sort of person most likely to be targetted by the Death Eaters 
for exploitation.
 

3) Arthur's particular hatred of Lucius Malfoy

Lucius Malfoy's lame and childish taunts about Arthur's failures as a 
provider are enough to goad him to initiate physical violence.  This 
may simply be read as evidence that the two were at Hogwart's 
together: there certainly is, to my mind, a marked schoolboy flavor 
to their relationship.  I do believe that they were likely at 
Hogwarts together.  And of course, they have some serious political 
disagreements as well.

None of this suffices, though, to account for quite the degree of 
bitterness that I detect in Arthur's attitude towards Lucius Malfoy.  
It strikes me as highly significant that although there is a strong 
cultural prohibition on speaking to ones children about the days of 
Voldemort's rise, and although we often see evidence that the Weasley 
family abides by this prohibition, Arthur has nonetheless apparently 
gone out of his way to talk about Lucius Malfoy's role in the war to 
even his younger children.

As an eleven-year-old boy just starting school, Ron already has 
knowledge of the precise details of Lucius Malfoy's acquittal. At the 
beginning of PS, he tells Harry:

"'I've heard of his family,' said Ron darkly. 'They were some of the 
first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said 
they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says Malfoy's 
father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side.'"

This is very specific knowledge for a kid who was raised in a 
culture that displays a pathological aversion to the idea of ever 
talking -- or even of thinking -- about those days. The Weasley
parents do not seem to make a practice of speaking to their 
children about such matters. Ron doesn't give the impression of
knowing about the Longbottoms, for example. He doesn't recognize
the Dark Mark when he sees it, either. For that matter, he doesn't 
even know what the Dark Mark *is.* And yet he happens to know the
specific grounds on which Lucius Malfoy was acquitted ten years
ago?

Why would Arthur have told Ron about Lucius Malfoy's acquittal,
when he's never even explained to the boy what the Dark Mark was?

Well, if he really had *sincerely* been placed under the Imperius
Curse at some point during Voldemort's reign, then the fact that 
Lucius Malfoy got off on the same claim must have really rankled.
It might even have rankled badly enough for him to have told his 
younger children about it, in spite of the evident reluctance of 
wizarding culture -- the Weasley family included -- to speak of
such matters.


4) Crouch/Moody's DADA Class

The "The Unforgivable Curses" chapter of GoF, which MRT cited in his
(?)message is, to my mind, by far the strongest evidence for the 
notion that Arthur Weasley was one of Voldemort's Imperius victims.

Although "several hands...[rise]...tentatively into the air" when
Crouch, as Moody, invites his students to name the Unforgivables 
for him, he chooses to call upon Ron.  He has already, at the very 
beginning of the DADA class, identified Ron as Arthur Weasley's son. 
Ron names the Imperius Curse, adding that he knows of it because his 
father has mentioned it to him. This seems to please Crouch immensely.

"'Ah, yes,' said Moody appreciatively. 'Your father *would* know that 
one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius 
Curse.'"

Now, we all know what Crouch is.  He's a sadist, isn't he?  He's a 
sadist, and he's a show-off; and he is sly. He just *loves* to 
entertain himself by making double-edged statements with malicious 
secondary meanings.  Just about everything he says throughout the 
novel has some nasty message lurking beneath it. So is it possible 
that there could have been a second meaning underlying that "your 
father *would* know that one," as well as some reason for him to be 
so very "appreciative" of Ron's answer?

Oh, yes. I think that's possible. I think that's definitely 
possible.

I also see a certain symmetry emerging in this chapter if we accept
as our starting hypothesis that Ron's father was indeed, at one time, 
a victim of the Imperius Curse. Crouch calls on Ron to volunteer the 
name of the Imperius. He calls on Neville to volunteer the name of 
the Cruciatus. I feel absolutely certain that he was just *dying* for 
Harry to raise his hand, so that he could force him to speak the name 
of the Avada Kedavra. Alas for Crouch, though, Harry is an ignoramus, 
and so he was forced to call on Hermione instead.  All the same, he 
*did* go out of his way to draw the class' attention to Harry after 
his demonstration of the curse, as well as forcibly reminding Harry 
that the Avada Kedavra was how his parents died. Crouch is just like 
that. He's clever and cruel, and he has some...well, let's just say 
some serious parental issues.


5) Hints of a Weasley family weakness to Imperius

Harry is a freak in his ability to shrug off the Imperius Curse -- 
that much is clear -- but the text also implies that Ron may have an 
unusual degree of difficulty with this task.  On their way to lunch 
after DADA class, in Chapter 15, Ron is "skipping on every alternate 
step. . . .Moody assured him the effects would wear off by lunch-
time."

No other student is shown to suffer from such lingering after-effects
after any of Moody's classes.  Even Neville Longbottom, who is not 
only a poor student but also the character that JKR usually selects 
to serve similarly slapstick comedic functions in the text, is never 
shown having this problem.

This is particularly odd because nowhere else in canon is Ron 
depicted as a poor student. He does have some difficulties in CoS, 
but only because of his broken wand; he doesn't take Divination at 
all seriously, but then, neither do any of the other male Gryffindor 
students. Ordinarily, Ron is canonically depicted as a perfectly 
average student. So why the trouble with the Imperius Curse? He's 
not really a weak-willed person at all.

Well, could it be a family trait? Riddle's diary did quite the job on 
Ginny too.


6) Arthur Weasley's unwillingness to risk exposure to the allure of 
the Veela during the QWC.

It seems reasonable to me that someone who was once victimized by the
Imperius Curse -- particularly by forces as hostile to ones personal
inclinations as the Death Eaters were to Muggle-loving Arthur 
Weasley -- would be *particularly* on guard against falling prey to 
similar mental magics a second time around.  Indeed, one might even 
be a bit phobic about that possibility.

A month or so ago, Irene and the Catlady were having a discussion 
about the mystery of the "third time Imperius" line in the graveyard 
scene of GoF ("And Harry felt, for the third time in his life, the 
sensation that his mind had been wiped of all thought...").  In the 
course of that discussion, either Irene or the Catlady (I can't 
remember which, sorry) proposed that perhaps the first time had 
actually been Harry's exposure to the Veela at the QWC.

The Catlady wrote:

> Hmm. Does that suggest that Veela magic is a form of innate and 
> perhaps automatic Imperius Curse? The command "Desire me!" cast on 
> any and all men in the vicinity 

Irene then added:

> That would explain also why Harry is handling it better than Ron. 
> Oh, and does it mean that there is more to Arthur Weasley than 
> meets the eye?

She provided this bit of canon:

> "'Aaah!' He suddenly whipped off his glasses and polished them 
> hurriedly on his robes.  *'Veela!'*"

Yes.  It is suggestive that, isn't it?  Unlike Irene, though, I don't 
view it as evidence that Arthur is unusually resistant to the allure 
of the Veela.  Far to the contrary, I think it shows that he is -- or 
perhaps merely fears himself to be -- even more vulnerable than 
ordinary men.  Just look at what he does.  He lets out an 
exclamation, and then he very quickly *takes his glasses off,* under 
the pretext of needing to clean them.  

We never see him put them back on his face.  My guess is that he 
didn't do so until the Veela were once more safely out of his range 
of vision.

Arthur does not want to see the veela.

Now, sure, Arthur's a married man and all.  He's a family guy.  I get 
that.  But he's still a *man,* isn't he?  And surely there is no 
particular stigma attached to drooling a bit over the veela, is 
there?  Even if Molly found out about it somehow (and she's not even 
there at the QWC, so it isn't that Arthur is trying to spare her 
feelings in any immediate sense), she would understand.  She wouldn't 
like it much, maybe, but she'd hardly throw a frying pan at him for 
it, would she?  I doubt it.  So why on earth does Arthur seem so 
eager to get those glasses off of his face?

Well, if the allure of the Veela is kin to, or even *feels* anything 
like the Imperius Curse, then quite possibly he's unusually skittish 
about that.  It scares him.  He doesn't want to be exposed to it, and 
so he tries to reduce the Veela's power to affect on him by rendering 
himself effectively blind, thus removing the entire visual component 
from the Veelas' seductive powers.


6) Implications of a Voldemort-related skeleton in the Weasley family 
closet

Of course, if poor Arthur Weasley really *had* spent some time under 
the Imperius Curse back in the bad old days, then clearly no one has 
ever told Ron or the Twins about it. While Ron doesn't care at all 
for those spiders, Crouch's Imperius demonstration doesn't otherwise 
seem to bother him at all -- he thinks that it's cool -- and he has
no negative reaction to Crouch's comment about his father. Similarly,
the Twins show no signs of distress over Crouch/Moody's DADA class; 
on the contrary, they are overflowing with enthusiasm about it.

The older children, on the other hand, would likely know about it,
because they would have been old enough to remember their father
being questioned and then absolved by the MoM.  Bill and Charlie
would know.  Percy might or might not, depending on how astute a 
child he was, how careless adults were about speaking of the matter 
in his presence, and whether or not Bill and Charlie understood that 
it was a secret Not For Younger Ears.

So is there any evidence in the text that Bill and/or Charlie are hip 
to something about their father and his relationship to the past, 
something that the younger children in the family do not know about?

I think that there is.  

At the end of _GoF,_ in Chapter 36, when Dumbledore announces his 
intention of sending a letter to Arthur to enlist his help in 
convincing other Ministry officials of the truth of Voldemort's 
return, Bill immediately volunteers to go to him in person.

"'I'll go to Dad,' said Bill, standing up.  'I'll go now.'"

It's a fast response.  It also has the feel of a preemptive strike.  
Bill wants to convince Dumbledore not to send Arthur a letter at 
all.  "I'll go right this very second.  It will be just as fast as 
the post.  Just please don't make my father learn this news from a 
*letter.*"

It's touching, that, but it is also really very suggestive.  Why 
precisely *is* Bill so concerned about Arthur's feelings when it 
comes to this topic?

I think that Arthur was an Imperius victim, and that Bill knows it.

I think that we also see evidence of this in Chapter Nine of GoF.  
There are peculiar undercurrents to all of the exchanges between 
Arthur and Number One Son Bill in this chapter.  Again, Bill seems to 
be playing a protective role.  He is the one to change the subject 
away from the Dark Mark, when Arthur seems to be becoming dangerously 
emotional on the topic and when the silence following Arthur's 
faltering seems to be dragging on for too long (Dangerously long, 
perhaps?  Long enough that Bill fears that it might provoke a 
confessional?).  When Bill does change the subject, he does so in a 
brisk, no-nonsense tone which seems to me to be quite deliberately 
intended to lower the emotional temperature ("Buck up, Dad").

His attempt to pull the conversation out of these dangerous waters
fails, though.  Harry asks what Death Eaters are.  Ron brings up the
Malfoys.  Arthur is still responding emotionally: he laughs hollowly,
he speaks about the DEs with undeniable bitterness.  Bill is not
pleased.  The next time that he chimes into the discussion, in 
response to Ron's continuing to pursue the matter of the Dark Mark,
his tone is actively irritable: "Use your brains, Ron."  

The matter is not all that easily dismissed, though, is it?  The
rest of the conversation makes particular emotional sense once we 
assume that Arthur was indeed an Imperius victim, and that eldest
son Bill is aware of that fact.

Bill's summary of the likely motivations of the ex-DEs at the Cup 
starts to venture into some very dangerous territory here: 

"If they really were Death Eaters, they worked very hard to keep
out of Azkaban when You-Know-Who lost power, and told all sorts
of lies about him forcing them to kill and torture people."

This is an interesting line, in part because it seems to be largely
a parroting of what we already know Arthur has told Ron about Malfoy.
Clearly this is a *big* issue for Arthur -- and he has seen to it 
that it has become a source of particular indignation for his 
children as well.  

It's also interesting, though, because it begs the question of why
precisely Bill is bringing this subject up again, when previously he
seemed to be working to deflect attention away from it.  What's up 
with that?  

It's been eating at him, I think, the question of precisely what 
Daddy did during the war.  It's not really a comfortable line of 
thought at all, is it, even if Bill accepts that his father was 
essentially innocent?  It can't help but trouble him.  Just what 
*did* his father do while under the Imperius, anyway?

As I read it, Arthur's next line is designed to reassure him.  
Although he is ostensibly answering Hermione, his answer doesn't 
strike me as really directed at Hermione at all.  It's directed 
straight at Bill.  Hermione asks whether whoever conjured the Dark 
Mark was doing it to show support or to scare the DEs away. Arthur 
acknowledges that the answer to that question is unanswerable, 
and then leaps to point out that *only* Death Eaters were ever taught 
how to conjure the Dark Mark.  It's very much as if he wants to 
reassure Bill that he was never *himself* forced to do such a thing.  
(Although it's not really very much of a reassurance, is 
it?  "Torture and murder, perhaps, but let me tell you something, 
son -- I *never* shot that Dark Mark up into the sky!")


7) Suggestions that the Weasleys feel themselves to owe a debt of 
gratitude to Mad-Eye Moody

This marvellous bit of canon was provided by Abigail, the last time 
that Imperio'd Arthur came up on the list (at a time when I was sadly 
away, else I would have commented more, er, promptly on it).  I will 
therefore defer to her own words here.

Abigail cited evidence of a special relationship between Arthur and 
Moody as a defense for the idea that Arthur may at one time have been 
an Auror.

(For more on Arthur-as-Auror, check out Abigail's message #37136 and 
its follow-ups.  Abigail, the Catlady, Barbara, and many other people 
whose names aren't leaping to mind right now have done a lot of 
*really* good stuff on this spec, but I'm not going to summarize it 
here because...well, I'd just be here all day if I did that, wouldn't 
I?)

In message #37136, Abigail wrote:

> Has anyone suggested the possibility that Arthur Weasly was, at 
> some point before the fall of Voldemort, an auror? The thought came 
> to me when I was thinking about the implied closeness between 
> Arthur and Moody. Amos Diggory calls on Arthur to bail Moody out 
> when his flying trashcans attack muggle policemen, and the 
> reactions from Molly and the older Weasly children seem to suggest 
> the kind of closeness you might see between former colleagues:

> '"I'd better hurry - you have a good term, boys," said Mr Weasly to 
> Harry, Ron and the twins, draggins a cloak over his shoulders and 
> preparing to Disapparate. "Molly, are going to be all right taking 
> the kids to King's Cross?"

> "Of Course I will," she said. "You just look after Mad-Eye, we'll 
> be fine."
> ...
> "Did someone say Mad-Eye?" Bill asked.
> ...
> "Your father thinks very highly of Mad-Eye Moody," said Mrs Weasly 
> sternly.'

> In all fairness, Charlie does ask, a few sentences later, whether 
> Moody was a friend of Dumbledore's, but I believe he says this as 
> proof that Moody is not insane as George claims him to be. 

Later on, Abigail acknowledged that this could also serve as 
canonical suggestion for Imperio'd Arthur:

> Or perhaps Moody was respnsible for breaking the Imperius curse 
> placed on Arthur - if such a thing is possible, I imagine Moody 
> would be the one to do it. That would put Arthur strongly in his 
> debt. Like I said in my previous message, I see no conflict between 
> Arthur-with-Imperius and Arthur-as-auror, so either way, this works 
> for me.

Leaving Auror!Arthur out of this for now, I do think that a bond of 
gratitude is strongly implied by both Arthur's willingness to bend 
the law to help out Moody and by the canonical exchange that Abigail 
cited.  Even if Moody had nothing to do with breaking Arthur's 
Imperius -- I myself consider it far more likely that the curse 
simply dissipated upon Voldemort's discorporation, as it did with so 
many of its other victims -- the Weasleys would still have reason to 
consider themselves quite deeply in Moody's debt if he had been the 
Auror assigned to investigate Arthur's case.  

We know that a number of the Aurors were not exactly gentle with 
suspects during that period in history.  Crouch had authorized them 
to use the Unforgiveables on suspects, which means that they were 
allowed to use torture in their attempts to uncover the truth. And 
apparently, a number of them did just that: Sirius claims that some 
of the Aurors descended to the level of Death Eaters in the last 
years of the conflict.

So given all of that, I think that if I were Arthur Weasley and I had 
turned myself into the Ministry when my Imperius Curse had been 
lifted, then I would feel very grateful indeed to have been treated 
with kindness or consideration or even plain old human decency by the 
person investigating my case.  Grateful enough that my wife might 
rebuke our children rather strongly for poking fun at the fact that 
the man's a wee bit unstable these days?  Yup.  Grateful enough that 
I would happily go out of my way to use what little clout I have to 
help cover up for the guy's minor legal indiscretions some thirteen 
years later?  Oh, you betcha.  In a heartbeat.

<Elkins pauses, suddenly struck by the image of a marriage between 
Evil!Moody and Stockholmed!Arthur, then shakes her head.  Another 
day.  Another day.  And probably *that's* one for the Bay.>


------


So I hope that's reassured you, MRT.  You're not the only one here 
malicious enough to have found themselves contemplating Imperio'd 
Arthur Weasley. ;-)

If you *really* want twisted, though, then how about combining 
Imperio'd Arthur with a Missing Weasley Child scenario?  

This is a favored combination for those who like their speculations 
Dark, bloody and horrific (in TBAY terminology, those who 
wear "featherboas").  For some reason, I'm guessing that someone 
named "Massive Road Trauma" might just be a featherboasish sort 
of person.  So here, submitted for your approval, is a quick run-down 
of "Missing Weasley Child."


-------


Evidence people have cited to support the notion that the Weasley 
family lost a child during voldemort's first rise includes:


1) The large gap in age between Charlie and Percy.

Some people have also come up with attempts to organize the Weasley 
children's names according to an alphabetical schematic in order to 
bolster the notion that there was a third son, now deceased, born 
between Charlie and Percy.  This is really not at all my favorite 
line of speculation, though (no offense intended to its adherents), 
so I'm not going to get into it here.  If you're curious about it, 
though, then you can find a very long and animated discussion of this 
speculation in the archives from early April.  A keyword search 
for "Weasley names" or "Seventh Son" should do the trick. 


2) Ron's description of the composition of his family to Harry in the 
first book.

>From Chapter Six of PS:

". . . . 'Wish I'd had three wizard brothers.'

'Five,' said Ron.  For some reason, he was looking gloomy.  'I'm the 
sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts.'"

Both that look of gloom and the fact that Ron says that he is the 
sixth to *go to Hogwarts,* rather than the sixth son, have been held 
by some to suggest that Ron had another brother who did not live to 
reach the age of eleven.


3) The Weasley family's traumatized response to allusions to or 
reminders of Voldemort's first rise

The Weasley family seems to have been unusually psychologically 
scarred by Voldemort's first rise to power.  The entire wizarding 
world is pathological in this regard, true, but the Weasleys strike 
many people as carrying even more emotional baggage about Those Dark 
Times than average wizards.  Of Harry's peers, Ron shows the 
strongest aversion to hearing Voldemort's name spoken outright.  Of 
course, he is also the only one of Harry's close friends who was 
raised within the wizarding world, so this alone could account for it,
if only there were not so many other indications that the Weasley 
family carries some form of severe yet secret trauma.

Take that clock, for example.  That paranoiac grandfather clock in 
the Burrow, the one with the special setting for "mortal peril."  Is 
that really a normal thing for wizarding families to have in their 
houses?

Well, maybe it is.  Maybe it is.  And yet, I notice that when a 
situation arises in which some of her family members might actually 
*be* in mortal peril, Molly doesn't seem to be able to bring herself 
to look at it to find out for sure.  When the rest of her family 
returns home from the QWC in Chapter 10, for example, she runs out to 
greet them, practically deranged with relief to see them all safe and 
sound.

"'Arthur -- I've been so worried -- *so worried* --'"

Molly is in quite a state.  She is described as "pale" and "strained."
She hasn't dressed.  She's still clutching her copy of the _Daily 
Prophet,_ although she lets it fall out of her "limp" hand once she 
has thrown herself into Arthur's arms.  In places, she is described 
as if she might even be tottering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

"'You're all right,' Mrs. Weasley muttered distractedly, releasing Mr.
Weasley and staring around at them all with red eyes, 'you're 
alive....Oh *boys*...'"

Why didn't she check the clock?

Don't tell me it's a FLINT.  It's not a FLINT.  JKR didn't forget 
about the clock, and she didn't want her readers to have forgotten 
about the clock either.  She describes the clock again in the *very 
same chapter.*  The clock is described in full, with special 
attention paid to that "mortal peril" setting, not *four pages* after 
her description of Molly's near-hysterical relief to see her family 
safely home.  And Molly looks at it, too, to see if Arthur is on his 
way home from work yet.

So Molly uses the clock.  She uses it on a daily basis.  The one time 
she can't bring herself to look at it, apparently, is when someone in 
her family might really be in danger.

This is suggestive.  People who have suffered through the agonies of 
knowing that a loved one has become trapped in a dangerous situation 
nearly always describe the worst part about that situation as "not 
knowing for sure."  The relatives of those who are "missing in 
action" in times of war, those who are "as yet unaccounted for" when 
there has been some terrible disaster -- these people *always* claim 
that they just want to *know,* that even knowing that their loved one 
had been killed would be far better than the terrible uncertainty.  
Right?

Molly's different, apparently.  Why would that be?

Perhaps because that clock has given her bad news before?


Arthur's explanation of the significance of the Dark Mark in Chapter 
9 is also not only highly emotional, but also highly suggestive:

"The terror it inspired ... you have no idea, you're too young. Just 
picture coming home, and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your 
house, and knowing what you're about to find inside ..." Mr. Weasley 
winced. 'Everyone's worst fear ... the very worst ..."

"There was silence for a moment."

It does sound rather as if he's speaking from personal experience, 
doesn't it? 



4) Congruence with the Seventh Son/Ron Is A Seer theory

Some people believe that Ron shows evidence of unconscious prophetic 
talents throughout the canon, and that this might JKR's way of 
foreshadowing a plot turn in which Ron will be revealed to be a seer.

I have never quite been able to swallow this one myself, but again, 
if you're interested, there has been plenty of discussion of it in 
the past.  A keyword search for "Seer" or "Seventh Son" should yield 
plenty of material for you to mull over.

The relevance of Seer!Ron to "Missing Weasley Child," of course, is 
that if Ron really does have a (now deceased) older brother, then 
that would make him a seventh son.  There is strong evidence that 
Arthur himself comes from a large family.  As the Catlady wrote in 
Message #37174:

> Btw, I remain troubled by Draco's statement that "all the Weasleys" 
> have red hair, no money, and more children than they can afford. 
> Sure, he was just quoting Lucius, but it seems to me that Lucius 
> would not have thought of saying such a thing unless there was more 
> than one Weasley who had numerous children. 

I agree with Catlady that this comment only really makes sense if we 
assume that the Weasleys' tendency to have many children is a multi-
generational phenomenon.  Arthur himself must come from a large 
family.  It is therefore possible that he is himself a seventh son, 
which would make Ron a Seventh Son of a Seventh Son -- held by 
Western folklore to imbue one with prophetic powers.


------


Of course, if you combine "Arthur Weasley With Imperius" 
with "Missing Weasley Child" then it gets rather difficult to avoid 
wondering whether poor dear sweet mild-mannered Arthur Weasley might 
actually have been in some way responsible for his own son's death.  

Such a line of inquiry might also lead you to wonder whether the 
running parricide motif of _Goblet of Fire_ is ever to be paralleled 
by a motif of filicide in some future volume.

Indeed, if you think overmuch on such matters, then you might find 
yourself noticing the hazy figure of Unwilling Filicide Arthur 
Weasley stepping slowly out from the murky shadows of canonical 
suggestion.

But this is such a thoroughly sadistic line of speculative thought 
that I myself would naturally never dream of suggesting it to anyone.


-- Elkins