The Triwizard Portkey

[elfundeb at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 40559

On Voldemort's alleged plan to attack Hogwarts, Elkins quoted Amanda:

> I believe, therefore, that the whole plan was something along these 
> lines:
> (a) get Harry through the tournament as a winner
> (b) get Harry to the graveyard for Voldemort's reanimation
> (c) use the portkey to return to the grounds of Hogwarts
> (d) make major offensive action against the gathered, unsuspecting 
> might of the free world.
> (e) sit back and mop up.

> It broke down at (b).

That it did.  But if it hadn't broken down at (b), wouldn't it have 
broken down at (c)?

[snip Elkins' vision of 30 DE's all landing in a jumble on the Quidditch 
pitch]

But even if they did manage that, then there's the problem of (d).

Voldemort and his thirty some-odd Death Eaters all appear, right 
outside of the hedge maze.  Preferably with Harry Potter's corpse, 
just for psychological effect.  [snip]

But, but, but...but they wouldn't really be appearing in the 
immediate vicinity of any convenient hostages, would they? 
[snip remainder of Elkins' excellent objections]

The attack on Hogwarts just doesn't make sense to me, but I have a different 
reason than those already given.

A successful attack involving even a small segment  of the DE's would have 
required a substantial amount of advance planning - Voldemort and his band of 
DE's couldn't just descend on Hogwarts via the Portkey and start blasting 
curses at random.  Yet they wouldn't have had time to plan an attack at the 
graveyard - sooner or later the crowd assembled at Hogwarts was going to 
realize something was amiss and disperse (I actually think they must have 
already realized there was a problem since Harry was in the graveyard quite 
awhile).  So the DE's didn't have time to plan such a mission on the spot.   

But notwithstanding Pip's Spying Game suggestion that Voldemort intended to 
use the Riddle fireplace as a communication device, there's no suggestion in 
the graveyard that the DEs could possibly have prepared anything in advance.  
In fact, they don't act like they were prepared ever to see Voldemort again.  
They "approached slowly, cautiously, as if they could hardly believe their 
eyes."  These cowards haven't been planning any attack.  I don't think 
Voldemort even risked contacting them; the loyalty of the ones who weren't in 
Azkaban was too questionable.  In GoF ch. 1, Wormtail finds Voldemort's baby 
form repulsive, and Voldemort even tells Wormtail, "Your devotion is nothing 
more than cowardice.  You would not be here if you had anywhere else to go."  
If he was worried about Wormtail leaving him, he certainly wasn't going to 
enlist the support of former supporters who had become used to the 
post-Voldemort life.

And had Voldemort been in contact with the DE's, would he have asked Harry 
(rhetorically) while waiting for them to arrive, "How many will be brave 
enough to return when they feel it?"  If he'd been talking to them I think 
he'd have a really good idea of who was going to show up.

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.  I suppose 
somebody could say that Crouch was lying, because Harry is not dead, and we 
saw Voldemort screamed in fury at his escape, so that must have been part of 
the plan.  But I agree with Pip that even killing Harry was a secondary 
objective - because I'm not sure Voldemort was convinced that he could kill 
him.  <nods to Pip's Plan B here> 

No, I can't believe there was any plan for the DE's to attack Hogwarts; 
Voldemort doesn't trust his remaining followers enough, and he needs to use a 
few more blasts of Cruciatus to ensure their loyalty before he can enlist 
them in anything like this.

Pippin, however, has a suggestion that would leave the DE's out of it:

An assasination attempt on Dumbledore would be too risky. It's 
clear from Voldemort's words in the graveyard that he's still 
afraid of him and so are the other DE's. 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. 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.

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? 

Besides, if that was the plan, wouldn't the appearance of Harry's AK'd corpse 
be, by itself, a most effective terrorist statement?  An extra blast at this 
time just doesn't seem necessary.

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?  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.  No, I think 
he's smart enough to stay in the graveyard frightening his followers into 
submission.

This would be a good reason to have one of Alora's personalized Portkeys.  
But Cindy's already addressed that:

Well, if the portkey were rigged to only transport Harry, 
this would be a nice trick.  But it clearly wasn't, as it 
transported both Harry and Cedric to the graveyard.

No, I think I'm back where Elkins, David, and Dave H. are:

So I stick with my theory that the Cup was a Portkey to the front of
the maze anyway (besides, how else could they be sure which champion
touched the Cup first?), and Crouch just inserted a "detour".

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?

But the detour in the portkey makes so much sense I'm willing to write this 
off as a FLINT.  As Dave H. says, how else would anyone know who won the 
tournament?  Or maybe Crouch/Moody was supposed to program the Portkey when 
he took it to the maze, but just programmed in an extra location.

This would leave only one more problem:  How to get Harry's corpse back to 
Hogwarts, if it's too dangerous for Voldemort or another DE to take it there. 
 Judy pointed out:

We never see portkeys 
transporting inanimate objects; it appears they only work when a live 
(magical?) human touches them.  So, I think someone would have had to 
*bring* Harry's body back, as Harry did with Cedric's body.  And that 
would be quite risky for whatever Death Eater did it.

Yes, I agree that Portkeys should only work on people.  But I do want this to 
work, because Dead! Harry at the edge of the maze has a lot more Bang than 
Missing Harry.  So maybe some kind of body warmth is required to trigger the 
portkey, in which case mightn't a portkey still work on a warm body?  If so, 
then all you need is to get Harry's dead body to touch the Portkey (Arthur 
Weasley says in the Portkey chapter that the contact of a single finger is 
sufficient) in order to send him back.  How about a well-executed Banishing 
Charm on Harry's body sending it to the portkey?  I think that would work.

Debbie




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