Fudge: Evil or what???

[huntergreen_3]

No: HPFGUIDX 107090

Magda Grantwich <mgrantwich at y...> wrote:
>> It would be quite deflating, characterization-wise, if EVERYONE who
disagreed with Dumbledore turned out to be a DE or definitely evil. <<

HunterGreen:
But we're not talking about EVERYONE here, we're talking about one 
man. In the case of Umbridge, I'd agree with you, if she turned out 
to be a DE it would be sort of deflating, but there's far more shady 
about Fudge than him not believing Voldemort has come back. 

What do we know about Fudge? At first his introduced as a nervous, 
sort of bumbling, oddly dressed beauracrat. Not too much of a threat 
to anyone, and sort of matching the description of him calling for 
Dumbledore's advice all the time in his early days at the post. He 
takes Hagrid away, mentioning *several* times that pressure is on him 
to do *something*. Of course taking Hagrid away won't help anything, 
and I think he knows that, but he has to at least appear to be trying 
to solve the problem. Then Malfoy comes in with the order to remove 
Dumbledore, and Fudge does fight against it, so his actions are sort 
of in the middle here. On the one hand, he's doing the one public 
thing to help with the school that won't help in the least bit, but 
on the other, he seems genuinally worried about Dumbledore leaving.

PoA, though, is where he gets sort of suspicious. A lot of the events 
of PoA are a little off though. This starts with Sirius' escape from 
Azkaban...its said over and over that he is the *only* person to ever 
manage it, that is until, the mass revolt in OotP, because they had 
help. However, Sirius' escape story is rather mundane, no grand use 
of dark magic or specific cunning at all:
[PoA, chpt 19, pg 372; US ed]
'So, one night when they opened my door to bring food, I slipped past 
them as a dog.... It's so much harder for them to sense animal 
emotions that they were confused.... I was thin, very thin... thin 
enough to slip through the bars.... I swam as a dog back to the 
mainland.... I journeyed north and slipped into the Hogwarts grounds 
as a dog.'
Why didn't anyone else escape before if it was that simple? The only 
thing special he did was turn into a dog, and although his emotions 
were 'different' it wasn't *impossible* for them to sense him. 
Wouldn't it have been just as easy for someone else to slip out 
(during their first few months there, before they are weakened), and 
just run for it and then swim away or swim far enough to appaperate? 
(although, I suppose there aren't *that* many life-long residents of 
Azkaban, maybe the others don't think escaping is worth it). Its 
oddly easy for him, unless he was helped somehow. The dementers don't 
really talk to people that much--or ever--so if someone told them to 
let Black go, who would ever find out? Who would be in that position? 
Fudge.

Now, of course, there's the issue of motive, why would Fudge want to 
let Sirius Black escape. If he wanted to kill Harry, that would be 
the easiest way to do it. Perhaps after hearing that Black has been 
talking in his sleep for a time, Fudge has an idea. If he makes it 
easy for Black to escape, *he'll* kill Harry, and Fudge won't have 
any blood on his hands. OR if Black doesn't manage to do it himself, 
Fudge has a reason to dispatch the dementers into the school and onto 
the train and into Hogsmeade, and tell *them* to kill Harry. Then 
after the fact, all he has to to is stand back and comment, "Oh, I 
don't know why they'd do that...". 

Whether or not you agree with ESE!Fudge, it is clear that the 
dementers do some odd things in PoA. We see them first on the train 
to Hogwarts, when they get on mid-way through to search the cab. 
Since I covered this already in another post(#98042), I'll just paste 
it here:
>It struck me as odd that they would stop the train HALFWAY through 
to search it, rather than doing it at the beginning of the trip. 
Obviously, if Sirius was on the train, he would have got to Harry 
long before the Dementers came to look for him. Of course, they could 
have searched it BEFORE it loaded with students, but that makes 
searching it several hours later sort of useless, doesn't it? And 
their search is a little odd too. Its a fair estimate that the 
Dementer searched each compartment of the train, ending with the last 
one, where Harry was. The door opens, Harry passes out, then the 
Dementer just stands there for a moment. Lupin asks it to leave, but 
it doesn't move until he uses (I'm guessing) expecto patronum on it. 
Now why is that? Its clear just opening the door who's in there and 
who's not (especially since the dementer 'senses' rather 
than 'looks'), and certainly no one else on the train had to use a 
charm to get the dementer to leave (since none of them know it), so 
why does it just stand there? 
Perhaps they were dispatched on the train as soon as Fudge could get 
them there (which was halfway through), with orders to find Harry, 
and that's why it didn't leave until Lupin *forced* it to.<

Then later on, during the quidditch match, its mentioned that they 
*all* are looking up at Harry, focusing their attention on him, in a 
*huge* crowd. And of course there's the finale, after the dementers 
have been *given permission* (meaning they usually DON'T have 
permission) to use the Kiss on Sirius, they ignore him after he 
passes out and go to Harry, who they *don't* have permission to do 
anything to. (or do they?)

Fudge is the only character we've seen who appears to get along with 
dementors (besides perhaps Voldemort). He uses one again in GoF, when 
he goes up to "interview" Barty Jr. How odd that he both happened to 
have a dementor on hand, and that it *immediately* went to Barty Jr. 
and performed the kiss the moment it walked in the room. Like I said 
above, its a fair guess that the dementors are NOT allowed to perform 
the kiss on anyone they like, but they will (happily, I'm sure) do it 
if they are TOLD to. 

As to the issue of Fudge disagreeing about Voldemort's return, his 
attitude and feelings on the subject are interesting to say the least 
at the end of GoF. Right after Crouch Jr. is killed he begins by 
denying that Crouch was anything but a murderer and a psychotic 
(implying that its not that much of a loss that he "died" before 
being able to testify), then he tries to debunk Voldemort's return by 
saying that the word of Harry and and Barty Jr. aren't enough, he 
tries to change the subject at one point, accusing Dumbledore of 
trying to de-stabalize him, and then when he's faced with evidence he 
cannot deny (Snape's dark mark), he says 'I have nothing more to 
add.' and leaves. 
His attitude goes from stubborn, to angry, to accusatory, to fearful, 
and finally just exhausted. Even when he's exhausted though, his 
reaction is to still feebily keep up the charade that he doesn't 
think Voldemort could *possibly* be back, at one point *pleading* 
with Dumbledore to believe him. Then, like I said above, when he runs 
out of ways to deny it, he just leaves. It seems like he's motivated 
by something else here. Either its just a basic love of power, and 
his desire to NOT have to be concerned with telling the public that 
Voldemort is back, or he's knows it for a fact and is trying to cover 
it up. 

There are other things odd about him too. For one thing he has a 
strange relationship with Lucius Malfoy. He goes out of his way to 
greet Lucius at the World Cup, he's "visibly affronted" when Harry 
calls him a DE, and he's meeting with Lucius the day of Harry's 
trial. Meeting with him privately. Now, I know how much money changes 
hand between the two men, but if he's not ESE, he's seriously 
corrupt. 
Also, he appears to be at the VERY least, mildly prejudice. He makes 
comments about both Hagrid and Madam Maxine being half-giants, AND 
comments about Lupin and his werewolf-ness during his argument with 
Dumbledore in GoF. And then Dumbledore accuses him of being blinded 
by his love of power and that he places too much importance on blood-
purity, a charge that Fudge doesn't dispute. And Dumbledore says this 
shortly after Dumbledore was 'staring hard at Fudge, as though seeing 
him plainly for the first time.'. 

The guy has some questionable motives, to say the least. And his 
constant way of appearing nervous in almost every time we see him 
(during which Dumbledore is always present) is kind of strange too. I 
just wouldn't be surprised if he's hiding something.