OOP: Narcissa

[Tom Wall]

No: HPFGUIDX 63810

Stac wrote:
Was anybody else disappointed and/or surprised that Narcissa seems to 
be clearly as corrupt as her husband and son? 

Tom replies:
Don't despair, Narcissa still has some leeway! 

We still don't have her doing anything really *evil* yet and there is 
still plenty of ambiguity in Dumbledore's speech. If JKR really 
wanted to condemn Narcissa, she'd be able to do it. Which makes me 
wonder why Narcissa's 'evil' hasn't been certified yet.

She's not with the other Death Eaters in the DoM, which means that we 
still have plenty of room to navigate one of the important questions 
about her: Is Narcissa a Death Eater? We still don't know for certain.

After all, being 'not so nice,' even being a sideline supporter of 
the Dark Lord, doesn't qualify one as *evil.* (And on that note, I'm 
glad to see FIE get flushed, since it's long been my contention that 
*incompetent* and *power-hungry* are also not "evil.")

So again, anyways, right, eventually we will have to seriously ask 
ourselves a little more about the nature of 'supporting' Voldemort, 
and what it means to *be* a Death Eater. 

Narcissa, IMO, is still not an established Death Eater.

Dumbledore tells us that Kreacher gave Narcissa information, but  
Dumbledore never tells us how that information got elsewhere. What he 
does say is that "The Malfoys - undoubtedly on Voldemort's 
instructions - had told [Kreacher] he must find a way of keeping 
Sirius out of the way once [Harry] had seen the vision of Sirius 
being tortured." (Ch.37, 831, US edition)

Linguistically, we're still in a lurch here... there is squirm room 
in the text. Did Kreacher tell Narcissa, who told her husband, who 
told Voldemort? Did Narcissa tell Voldemort *directly?* And who gave 
Kreacher the orders to keep Sirius out of the way? We could theorize 
out of canon, of course, that it must have been Narcissa who 
delivered the order, but as far as I'm concerned, 'The Malfoys' is 
sufficiently vague enough to leave shades of gray in Narcissa's 
character.

-Tom