Agency in the Shrieking Shack

[Risti <pretty_feet51@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52168

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, GulPlum <hp at p...> wrote:
> I have several fundamental objections to MD (and variants). One I 
don't > think I've expressed before is that I consider the importance 
of the > life-debt element to be a major assumption and leap in the 
dark, unfounded > in canon (note, it's the importance and 
implementation of the life-debt > which I'm questioning, not its 
existence). The general concept of a > "life-debt" bears out the one 
canon Potterverse example we've had > explicitly explained to date, 
namely Snape's life-debt to James. This > operates on the basis that 
even though Snape hates Harry, he will protect> him from potential 
harm, which has caused him to take action on at least > two 
occasions.  Snape's life-debt doesn't manifest itself in purely 
magical > ways; it manifests itself, if I can borrow from psychology, 
as a compulsion > to act in one way rather than another.

Ahh, but you see, I use this very example as proof of just how 
important the life debt is.  Snape very obviously hated James 
Potter.  Snape would have hated James just as much during his years 
as a DE as he does when Harry meets him, if not more.  For the 
record, I'm talking about the time *before* he becomes Dumbledore's 
secret agent.  In PoA, Snape threatens Sirius with 'Give me a 
reason,' he whispered. 'Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I 
will.'(p 264, PoA, softcover).  IMHO, Snape is threatening Sirius's 
life.  By the nature of the wording of the threat, I'd say that he 
knows Sirius knows that he can and has killed a person at wand tip 
before.

Well, James Potter certainly should have been at the top of Snape's 
list of 'people to kill' when he was a DE.  According to the way the 
DE's activities are explained in the beginning of GoF, he didn't 
really need to have a reason to kill a muggle lover like James.  So 
why didn't he?  Before all that Secret Keeper business and Voldemort 
realizing that *he* wanted to kill James.  Because Snape had a life 
debt to James, and therefore couldn't kill him.

Glum Plum COntinues
> Furthermore, considering all the theories appear to agree that 
Sirius is a > major variable here, doesn't the whole plan hinge just 
a little too much on  Snape/Lupin/both being able to stop him before 
he kills Peter himself?  Sirius could transform at any time and 
literally bite Wormtail's head off  before any of the other 
characters had a chance to react (or even arrive on 
> the scene).

As I recently stated in my TBAY proposition of SUNLIGHT ULTRA: Snape 
Undercover Needs Lupin In Getting Harry To Use Lifedebt To Restrict 
Adversary(message 52129), the lack of control that MD has at this 
point was one of the major problems I had with it as well.  That was 
why I proposed the theory that I did there.

Glum Plum then states:
> Incidentally, and I'm a bit surprised that nobody's raised this 
point yet:  somewhere along the line in the present discussion, the 
spectre of  Azkaban!Hagrid was raised, and the notion that during his 
imprisonment in  CoS, Hagrid MUST have heard the stuff going around 
the prison. I see  absolutely no need to draw this conclusion. 
Azkaban had been described as a  "castle". It's perfectly possible 
for the DEs to be confined in the  dungeons while Hagrid was left in 
an entirely different part of the castle.  After all, Hagrid had 
never been accused of being in league with Voldemort,  but "only" of 
having opened the Chamber 50 years previously. There's no  real 
reason why he should have been anywhere close to the DEs and their  
mumblings.

Thank you for giving me even more reasoning for the 'Hagrid could not 
tip them off' argument.  As I stated in the previously mentioned 
post, I do not believe that they knew about Pettigrew before the 
night of the Shrieking Shack.  I actually had canon to prove that 
Hagrid wasn't hearing any secret rumours while in Azkaban.  On page 
153 of PoA(softcover), in the scene where Harry is finding out the 
truth about why Sirius is supposedly after him, Hagrid appears to be 
completely clueless about Sirius.  Now, at this point Hagrid has at 
least some of that mulled mead in him, and probably isn't being very 
discreet.  Yet even though Peter Pettigrew was also brought up in 
that conversation, Hagrid didn't react to that name.  In fact, he 
seems pretty clueless about the entire Secret Keeper scheme, leading 
me to believe that he heard nothing about who betrayed the Potters 
while he was in Azkaban.

~Risti, desperately trying to prove that her theory doesn't go 
against MD, but helps it...