Two questions on the invisibility cloak

psychic_serpent psychic_serpent at yahoo.com
Thu May 22 18:38:12 UTC 2003


No: HPFGUIDX 58448

"Ersatz Harry" <ersatzharry at y...> writes:
 
Second question:  When Ron first sees the cloak, he notes that it is 
both "really rare" and "really valuable".  Offhand, the only other 
person I can think of who has one is young Barty Crouch.  Does the 
rareness of the cloak have some larger significance?

Melanie L Ellis <emeleel at j...> wrote:

I don't think so. I think that Invisibility Cloaks are probably just 
rare and valuable because the magic that has to go into them is 
really hard and not many people can do it and make the Cloaks. Kind 
of like animagic - can you imagine how "rare and valuable" an 
Animagic Cloak would be? I think it's the same for invisibility. 
 
Me:

Apropos of this subject, after reading the above, it occurred to me 
that something wasn't spelled out explicitly when Barty, Jr. was 
telling his tale to Dumbledore et al under the influence of Snape's 
Veritaserum.  One might wonder how an Auror like Moody could have 
been surprised by Crouch, when he was so paranoid that his very dust 
bins were part of his defense.  The answer is, of course, that Moody 
WASN'T surprised; he knew very well that someone was trying to 
attack him, and might even have recognized his attacker, although 
recognizing young Crouch might have made him doubt his sanity, since 
everyone thought he was dead.

The reason why the real Moody knew that someone was trying to break 
into his house, in addition to his dark detectors going off, was 
that he could see through Invisibility Cloaks!  Young Barty would 
have no way of knowing this, of course, and probably thought that 
when he went to Moody's house to execute the switch, wearing the 
Cloak, that he would be able to sneak up on Moody without a 
problem.  

So, Moody puts up a fight, being able to see his attacker without 
any problem, but Crouch still prevails and is able, in the guise of 
Moody, to greet Arthur Weasley and the other Ministry folks when 
they show up to investigate the ruckus.  One slightly hard to 
believe element in this scenario is that I find it a bit implausible 
that Crouch knew about the magical trunk ahead of time, which 
provides a VERY convenient method for him to both hide Moody's body 
and have it nearby all during his time at Hogwarts, so that he can 
continue to make the Polyjuice Potion, but I suppose I can overlook 
that.  (It's also unlikely that he went to Moody's house ahead of 
time to investigate, since Moody could see through Crouch's cloak 
and had the hair-trigger dark detectors.)

This little event also gives Crouch another advantage: he knows that 
with Moody's magical eye at his disposal, he can see through any 
other Invisibility Cloaks that might be about, which just happens to 
be how Harry moves about the school at night!  As Crouch has to be 
even MORE paranoid than Moody to avoid detection, this means that it 
is less likely that he can be ambushed by anyone.  I believe that is 
really the purpose of both Crouch and Harry having Invisibility 
Cloaks, and it is another neat way of JKR giving her hero and 
villain similar attributes (and taking away one of Harry's 
advantages--invisibility).

Of course, if Crouch, Sr. hadn't released his son from prison, none 
of this might have happened, and if Arthur Weasley and the other 
folks from the Ministry hadn't been so blase when they showed up at 
Moody's, Crouch never would have been able to pull off a ten-month 
impersonation of a former Auror without anyone being the wiser until 
Dumbledore finally notices something a bit off about him after the 
Third Task.  Frankly, when he arrived at the house, Arthur probably 
should have started quizzing Crouch to test him and make sure he was 
who he seemed to be.  (Although if he had, there would have been no 
fourth book. <g>)  In books 5, 6 and 7, I wouldn't be surprised if 
Ministry officials became far more suspicious of everyone, which 
could start to make the books feel ripped from the headlines.  (When 
JKR planned her story arc, I doubt that she could have foreseen the 
twisted future path of world politics.)  Of course, the Ministry 
would probably first have to acknowledge that Voldemort is back 
before we start reading about extreme security precautions in the 
wizarding world.  I'll be interested to find out about that on June 
21.

--Barb

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Psychic_Serpent
http://www.schnoogle.com/authorLinks/Barb







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