Longbottom's Torture to Insanity (Re: candy)

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 109868

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Brenda M." <Agent_Maxine_is at h...> wrote:
> 
> Let me follow your logic:
> 
> So if the droobles bubble gum wrapper *did* contain coded messages or 
> provide some sort of communication method, Alice Longbottom could not 
> have been *absolutley* insane and without mind?  Assuming it was out 
> of her own motivation to pass it along to Neville, I doubt any 
> clinically-insane permanently-lost-their-mind patients will be able 
> to do that, not consciously anyway.
> 
> If it is the case of 3) or 4) from above, I think it has Ever-So-Evil!
> Dumbledore written all over the place.  Great, Kneasy will be 
> pleased...
> 

Speak my name and I appear.

No, I don't really go for ESE!DD - he's much more devious and manipulative
than that. After all, many posters seem to think that villains are by their
very nature one-dimensional. Not if the author is any good they're not. 
Try Dracula (the original, please), Hannibal Lecter or O'Brien in 1984.

But let's have a look at this Droobles stuff - mostly because I've been in
an off-board exchange with Lyn Mangiameli about it. He has an idea, not
so much a theory, more a possible connection which despite my urging 
he's reluctant to post and he suggested I do so instead. So I will, with 
maybe some thoughts of my own.

OK. 
There's general agreement that Alice is trying to tell Neville something.
At one time the site was knee-deep in anagrams as posters tried to
re-arrange 'Droobles Best Blowing Gum' into a message that would mean 
something. When that didn't work most of 'em tried for a message that'd
mean *anything*, sensible or not. It wasn't a great success. Fortunately
I  had other things to post about at the time and so I wasn't sucked into
the mire, not that an anagram was a conclusion I'd have favoured anyway.

If Alice and Frank had been tortured to insanity it's unlikely that Alice
would be able to construct a communication that would need one's 
full wits and mental faculties to visualise and comprehend. No, it's 
much simpler than that. She's trying to give Neville a clue, not a message. 
And it's urgent and important.

So if it's not the wrapper, what's left? The contents - the gum. Some 
believe that the Longbottoms are being secretly drugged. I  don't go
for  that either. The potions (ever seen a pill or tablet or an injectable
in the WW?) come in the large economy size. If someone wanted to
keep the Longbottoms quiet I doubt they'd fit the draft inside a piece of 
gum - and how would the Longbottoms know it was being done to them 
anyway? They wouldn't - not unless the person responsible surreptitiously
doctored the gum at the bedside. Once, maybe. But for 12 years? Oh, look,
a pinion-equipped porcine just flapped past.
 
What does Droobles do? It produces bubbles, spheres that remain stable
for days. Spheres? What sort of clue is that? Where can we find spheres? 
In the Ministry, in the Dept. of Mysteries, of course.

There's a fair chance that there is something in a prophecy globe that 
concerns Neville. Alice blows bubbles and they remind her and she's
desperate to get the concept across to Neville. And I doubt that the globe
is the same one as that Voldy was after. Mind you, it could be one of the
two that were broken, the ones where we didn't quite hear the prophecies
they contained. Wouldn't put it past JKR, being sneaky like that.

Kneasy