TBAY: DAVY JONES'S LOCKER

[Tim Johnson Family]

No: HPFGUIDX 81128

DAVY JONES'S LOCKER


        A clear sky hung over Theory Bay; a few ships floated in the harbor,
drifting as far as their anchors would allow them. The only moving things in
sight were a couple of sunbathers on a ship flying the LOLLIPOPS flag, a few
yellow-flag pelters polishing their OotPs for another season of refereeing,
and a remote-controlled jet ski going gaga. Despite the somnolent state of
the bay, out of the Safe House strolled a teenager, lugging an Aqua-Lung,
intent on exploring the bottom of Theory Bay.
        Wow, thought RTJ, as the waters swirled around her. The bay floor
was crowded with the skeletons of sunken ships. Some had sunk because of
poor design, others were swamped with yellow flags, but most looked as
though they had been pelted with a cannon shooting projectiles the exact
size and shape of a 870-page children's book.
        But something that didn't blend in with the scenery came into view.
It looked to RTJ like a house built out of scraps from ships. One wall was
the hull from a sunken Memory-Charmed!Neville ship; the roof was a cabin
door cast off while SILK GOWNS was being constructed. Front and center,
where the entrance would have been, was what looked like a round, plastic
bubble.
        RTJ swam closer. She could see through the bubble's convex
distortion that there was someone inside. She kicked her flippered feet and
extended her hand; the moment her fingers touched the surface of the bubble,
she felt a force grab hold of her arm, and she was sucked through the bubble
with a strange squelching sound.
         RTJ's knees buckled when she hit the floor. Her arms flew through
the air until she found her balance. Peeling soggy strands of hair from her
face, RTJ blinked water from her eyes and found herself inside a small,
cramped room. A painting of Neville Longbottom hung on the wall, a table was
covered in immaculately clean dishes, and a smudged plan for an
Evil!Penelope ship was pinned above a very complicated diagram showing
various wizards connected to Voldemort. RTJ stared, fascinated, at the low
resolution of the diagram when a rough voice spoke from the corner.
        "Finally. Knew somebody would be interested."
        RTJ spun around. In the corner was a man--she had never seen him
before-but the grizzled hair, the patch over the eye, the scarred face and
lopsided grin, the wooden leg--
        "Mad-Eye Moody?" RTJ gasped.
        The man glared, pulled a pipe out of his pocket, and wagged it at
her.
        "That's Davy Jones to you. This is my Locker."
        "Davy Jones's Locker? What does that stand for?"
        "Simple," said Davy, pausing to light his pipe. "Dumbledore Aims at
Voldemort. Young James's Offspring Not Elected by Sibyll. Son of Longbottoms
Obviously Chosen to Kill Evil Riddle."
        For one moment, RTJ had the sensation of the world turned upside
down, of everything inverse, like the negative of a photograph (a sensation
she recognized from reading OotP). Then orientation returned, and she
laughed.
        "What's that?" growled Davy.
        "No wonder you're here at the bottom of the bay! All the serious
theories are floating," she said, giggling, and began to unbuckle the heavy
oxygen tank.
        "Serious? Hah!" muttered Davy, glaring at the smoke wafting from the
end of the pipe. "LOLLIPOPS. FLIRTIAC. They're up their Shipping around, and
I'm the paranoid one, the one who's suspicious of everything, the one who
sees shadows on the wall. Censorship! That's what it is! They don't want me
to talk!"
        RTJ, dumping her scuba equipment on the floor, looked up. Someone
was censoring Theory Bay? "Who?" she asked. "Who are they?"
        Davy studied her for a moment, then took a drag from his pipe.
"Everyone," he said with a puff of smoke.
        RTJ's alarm bled away into nothing; she could see the Flying
Hedgehog badge now, on the tattered striped shirt Davy wore. Nodding as if
she understood, she sat on the edge of the table.
        "I'm perfectly sure everyone's very interested in DAVY JONES'S
LOCKER," she said.
        "Oh?" growled Davy, giving her a sideways look. "Are you?"
        RTJ considered. "Does it have anything to do with Snape?"
        "No," Davy admitted. "I tried to add a bit of discarded LOLLIPOPS,
but it wouldn't fit. I'm mostly bits and pieces of Neville wrecks--I've
borrowed a big bit from SILK GOWNS, and pretty much everything in here's
been through the Magic Dishwasher. I'm working on something--maybe a
submarine--that'll prove Snape isn't spying on the Death Eaters, and there's
a new arsenal coming, called WAG, but that's another story entirely."
        RTJ raised her eyebrows, impressed. "I can't believe I've never
heard of you, Davy. I had no idea you were down here."
        "I am bitterly aware of that fact, and that's Mr. Jones to you,
gal."
        RTJ grinned. "So how did you end up down here?"
        "That, my girl, is too long a tale to tell. I can just tell you what
the Locker is all about." Davy Jones drew on his pipe. RTJ noticed he was
smoking tar-free seaweed.
        "Now: end of Harry's fifth year. Harry has proven he's one tough
teen, and has a built-in Anti-Possession Protection. But Dumbledore knows
the scar-link is up and operational. There's no reason to assume that,
because Voldy can't possess Harry, he won't be accessing his mind anymore.
So Dumbledore goes back to doing what he does best-misinforming.
        "Remember," Davy said, leaning forward and lowering his voice, "this
is Magic Dishwasher Dumbledore we're talking about. He tells Harry most of
the truth-but when it comes to the Prophecy, he knows that it's very
important. So he shows Harry a fabricated Pensieve memory. Notice how he
sighs before he starts playing it? He's thinking, 'Here I go again, lying.'"
        "Okay, but if you say that Dumbledore was lying, there's nothing to
indicate what the real Prophecy said. Yellow flag."
        "No," said Davy, a mad glint in his eye. "Dumbledore is speaking to
Voldemort, right? The details of the Prophecy must jibe with what Voldemort
knows. So all details are true, except one line of the Prophecy itself: And
the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have a power the Dark
Lord knows not."
        "I noticed the shift in style there!" exclaimed RTJ. "The meter is
messed up-something about the poetry . . . I thought it was a bit of a
Flint."
        "It was something much darker," Davy said. "Dumbledore made up that
line on the spot, to make it seem like the Prophecy referred to Harry. The
true Prophecy pointed to Neville."
        "But why would Dumbledore put Harry in danger?" said RTJ, wringing
the water out of her hair.
        "Harry is in danger anyway. Neville hasn't shown much chutzpah
yet-at least as far as Dumbledore can see. Protecting Neville and putting
Voldemort off track is more important than making Harry feel good." Davy
smiled with grim satisfaction.
        RTJ examined her reflection in a shining dinner plate for a moment,
then looked at Davy. "So what did the Prophecy really say?"
        Davy turned the pipe over in his hands. "This isn't essential to
DAVY JONES'S LOCKER," he said, stuffing more seaweed into his pipe. "The
foundation of the Locker is the idea that the Prophecy is false, and Neville
the Chosen One."
        RTJ grinned. "Go on, I want to hear."
        Davy took a deep breath, and let it explode out again. But
excitement had crept into his black eyes. "I think the Prophecy points to a
boy who, if he defeats Voldemort, will revenge and reawaken his parents.
That's what gives Dumbledore a pause. Surely Harry can revenge his parents.
But can he reawaken them? Dumbledore's heaviness, when he tells Sirius and
Harry that no spell can reawaken the dead, is the heaviness of a guy who has
thoroughly researched the matter and has met a brick wall. It can't be Harry
because his parents are gone."
        "But it can't be Neville's parents either," said RTJ quickly,
"because it was Bella, Barty, Rabby, and Rudolph who attacked them, not
Voldemort! And they're insane!"
        "Way back in 1981, Dumbledore had some hard decisions to make
regarding Harry and Neville," Davy said. "Harry was easy to protect.
Dumbledore sends him to the Dursleys. But Neville had no blood protection,
no mother dead to save him--what to do?
        "Well, y'see, Dumbledore reckoned the best way to protect the
Longbottoms was to remove their memory of the Prophecy. So he Memory Charmed
them."
        RTJ nodded. This was old territory, but she had a feeling that he
was aiming at SILK GOWNS.
        "One year later, Bellatrix and gang attack the Longbottoms, trying
to recover the text of the Prophecy. They put the Imperius Curse on them to
force them to tell. Only they soon run into the Memory Charm. So the resort
to the Cruciatus Curse, trying to do as Voldemort did to Bertha Jorkins and
break through the Charm."
        "And the curse drives them mad!" RTJ said, nodding. "That's canon
enough. But why do we need--"
        "Don't interrupt!" Davy growled, knocking ash from his pipe. "Bella
and Co. are sent to Azkaban. But the Imperius Curse remains on the
Longbottoms--it is that which makes them appear insane. They were not
tortured to insanity. No one except Dumbledore recognizes the subtle
differences between an Imperio'd and a genuinely insane person. It makes him
realize that the Longbottoms can be cured."
        "But how--"
        "Hold your sea horses!"
        Davy beckoned RTJ closer, and dropped his voice so she could hardly
hear it, his excitement barely contained on his face.
        "Some people think the reason Voldemort didn't die when his Avada
Kedavra backfired was that he was connected to his Death Eaters. Now, I like
that idea, but I think that it's more than that. I think that, to sustain
somebody's life, the connection must be more than just a skin-grafted
Protean Charm. I think that, at some metaphysical level, the Death Eaters
and Voldemort share their souls--a collective consciousness, if you will.
        "Now, if Bella, Barty, Rabby, and Rudolph collectively put an
Imperius Curse on the Longbottoms, then this would be more than a simple
enchantment. It would be a connection existing on the same level as the Dark
Mark connection. The Death Eaters haven't had easy lives while Voldemort was
a miserable, super-concentrated ghost--and neither have the Longbottoms.
Their tortured psyche may be connected to his."
        Davy went back to his pipe, speaking in a normal tone now. "The easy
answer is, when Neville kills Voldemort, the Death Eaters will all die, and
the Imperius Charm will be lifted."
        For a moment, silence filled the Locker, punctuated by the
shwooshing noise of the water, and the occasional curse from Davy when his
pipe went out.
        Finally RTJ spoke up. "But--"
        "Enough, girl! I don't have time to explain everything!"
        "But what canon is there behind this?"
        "Find it yourself. One important bit is the fact that Harry *can't*
kill people--see the second last chapter of Order of the Phoenix. That's a
clear indicator that the end won't be as straightforward as Dumbledore
says."
        RTJ suppressed her smile. Something was tickling her past endurance.
Davy saw her expression, and raise an eyebrow.
        "You know this is all pretty silly?" RTJ said, still trying not to
grin and failing. "The whole point of the end of Phoenix is that Dumbledore
has told Harry the truth. Do you really think that Rowling will go back on
that? Do you really believe that Dumbledore is lying, and that Harry is not
really the Chosen One?"
        Davy smiled sheepishly, looking at the ground. "Well  . . ." he
said. "Not really . . . but it's lots of fun . . . and I've already made a
couple of important discoveries. Look at this!" he said, leaping to his feet
and running to a small display case. He opened it, and lifted out a ship in
a bottle. "Look! The Motive (For the Attack on Neville's Parents)! I just
finished it-and The Metaphysical Connection! Here," he extended it to her,
"take a look. These are canon-proof, I'm sure of it."
        RTJ looked from the intricately detailed model ship, to the
childlike glow on Davy Jones's face. "These are wonderful ships, Davy," she
said.
        "I know," Davy said, cradling the bottle. He reverently put it back
into the display case, and shut it. There was a moment of silence.
        "Listen, somebody said they were going to start throwing flags at
the Magic Dishwasher, and I promised I'd be there to defend it. Want to
come?"
        "No," Davy growled, his own grim self again. "Let the Dishwasher
take care of itself. I'm going to figure out this Snape thing . . . the
acronym is the hard part . . . they don't want me up there anyway."
        He slunk into a corner, muttering darkly about flamingoes and cats.
RTJ smiled at him for a moment, feeling real affection for this paranoid
pirate. Then she strapped on the Aqua-Lung, and jumped through the Bubble
Charm, ready to swim to the surface and tell all her friends about the mad
man hiding in Davy Jones's Locker.

DAVY JONES: Dumbledore Aims at Voldemort. James's Son Not Elected by Sibyll.
DAVY JONES'S LOCKER: Dumbledore Aims at Voldemort. James's Son Not Elected
by Sibyll. Son of Longbottoms Chosen to Kill Evil Riddle.

--Posted by RTJ