ESE!Fudge

[feklar]

No: HPFGUIDX 113396

> > Feklar:
> Fudge's assistance or no, I've been wondering why LV didn't
> just walk in and get it himself in the first place.  The 
> Deatheaters certainly had no problems getting right to the 
> prophecy when Harry went for it.  He would have had to face 
> one unofficial OP guard, instead he got Harry to do it and he
> riled up DD and the OP. < 

Pippin:
> Indeed he could have gotten it himself. But as Bella tells us, 
> that would have proved he was back, which the Ministry was
> engaged in denying. That explanation doesn't make sense if
> Fudge is a DE, because he could have blamed the theft on 
> Harry and gone right on denying Voldemort's return.


Feklar:

That's part of what felt so trumped up to me.  Fudge was quite happy to go
on denying the return with an eyewitness, a mysterious portkey and a dead
body at a major WW event,  a DE's testimony under veritaserum, and Snape's
Mark.  It seems to me, after a summer of defaming DD and HP, he would have
had little difficulty in blaming them for the theft -- assuming the theft
was even noticed (they are all dust-covered and abandoned-seeming...what if
LV left a faked globe in its place?)

Pippin:
> But if Fudge is not a DE, and Harry obviously can't have stolen
> the prophecy because he was at Hogwarts, then Fudge will be
> faced with undeniable neutral evidence of Voldemort's return and
> he will be forced to act.

DD could take Harry anywhere he wants (the hospital, for example).  Since
Fudge has the idea that it's best to blame them for everything, a short
excursion to the MOM doesn't seem at all improbable.  Indeed, to Fudge, it's
less improbabe than the idea that LV took it.  I suppose the only
countervailing argument is that LV didn't know how irrationally Fudge hated
DD and HP (though the disinformation campaign might be a hint) and wouldn't
count on Fudge blaming them.

I don't think Fudge is a DE.  I like the idea that he typifies the absolute
corruption of absolute power.

Feklar