PERCY: DD's Personal Spy or Ministry's Puppet? (Long)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 111403

Ministry puppet or Spy for the Order, what was Percy trying to 
accomplish with this letter? Suppose on the ministry puppet 
side, he actually wants Ron to break with Harry, his family and 
Dumbledore--what does that accomplish for Percy? How does it 
further his aims, or the Ministry's? Dumbledore and Harry lose 
the valuable support of --Ron? It will hurt Harry's feelings, sure, 
but what does that do for the cause? Ron's not even of age!

 Ron's not going to have any useful information to feed to 
Umbridge if he breaks contact with Harry and alienates his 
parents, so it can't be that. Anyway,  would Powerhungry!Percy 
want Ron to give info to Umbridge? Wouldn't he want it for 
himself? And wasn't it the idea that the Ministry wanted to pump 
the Weasley family for information that got Percy into such a tizzy 
in the first place? So now, he thinks it's okay?

More than that, Percy has been a head boy and a prefect. 
Presumably he knows something about how to motivate 
teenagers. Anybody who works with teens knows that  you need 
to offer a reward that's concrete, immediate and highly desirable 
-- now, if Percy had dangled an extra trip to Hogsmeade in front 
of Ron, I'd be worried, but head boy ship, possibly, in two years? 
No way!

Furthermore, Percy worries about having his letter intercepted, 
but never checks to see if Ron actually got it. That doesn't sound 
like detail-oriented Percy to me.


Now, looking at the other side, what would Spy!Percy accomplish 
by sending the letter? Is there any information in it that the trio 
doesn't already have? Well, there's Umbridge's appointment as 
High Inquisitor, but that must be a red herring, since they're 
going to find out all about it in a few hours, and it's hardly 
something the Trio would overlook. The Order has already told 
them that communications are hazardous, that Dumbledore's in 
trouble, and that Umbridge is not to be trusted. Oh, and that 
Percy is a git.

So what else is new? Only this: Dumbledore's friend Sturgis 
Podmore is being sent to Azkaban.

The Trio already know something about this because it was in 
the newspaper.  But where was it? In a one inch item at the 
bottom of a column, under a huge ad for a sale at Madame 
Malkin's. The Order could hardly be sure that the trio had seen it, 
or that they would  remember that Sturgis is a member of the 
Order.

As for its significance, Harry had  contacted the Order wanting to 
know why his scar was hurting. Well, here's one possible 
answer--it just might have something to do with Voldemort's 
reaction to the news about Podmore.  This is not something it 
would be safe to have Sirius tell Harry through the fire. 
Dumbledore would not want Voldemort to know that he'd made a 
connection between Harry's scar hurting and the Podmore 
matter.

Of course the ploy works a little too well, since Harry doesn't 
make the connection between his scar hurting and Podmore 
either. And the saga continues...

Pippin