Nott & Zabini (was Re: Snape Moratorium)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 136479

Potioncat wrote:

<snip>
> Let's try Theodore Nott. Who was surprised that Theodore Nott didn't 
> play a bigger role in this book? Or even that we never found out 
> about his father's injuries? 
> 
> Theo was vaguely described in OoP, even to point of pointedly not 
> being named by Hagrid; then was mentioned with Draco reading Harry's 
> accusation of their fathers.
> 
>  In HBP he's named (or not) under circumstances that tell us
> 1) He isn't hanging out with the other Slytherins on the train.
> 2) Because of his father's reputation, he isn't invited to join the 
> Slug Club.
> 3) he isn't mentioned as being in Potions, but could be the 4th 
> Slytherin student.
> 
> So does anyone think he'll play a part in the next book?
><snip>
> We'll have to wait and see if he'll be: Nott,Important.
> 
> Instead of Nott gaining importance, it's Zabini that gets page time. 
> We learn that Blaise is Black and that Blaise's mother is a widow 7 
> times over. I wonder if all her husbands were named Henry and if 
> she's on the eigth one now?
> 
> Potioncat, humming Herman's Hermits' "Henry the Eighth"

I had exactly the same reaction to Blaise Zabini's mother:"I got
married to the widow next door/
She's been married seven times before/
And every one was an "Ennery...

Okay, enough on that!

The problem with that reaction, which I hope JKR didn't intend, is
that it makes Zabini's mother into an almost comic figure, whereas
she's obviously a very sinister and dangerous femme fatale. She does,
however, tie in with the mysterious powers of the number seven, which
I suspect will play an important role in the seventh book (as JKR's
new Wizard of the Month also suggests).

I think Blaise's purpose in HBP (aside from appeasing fans who've
wondered about him and disabusing them of their notions that he's
going to be the Good Slytherin) is to show that Slytherins can be
cold, arrogant, pro-pureblood bigots and still not be Death Eaters.
(He's proud of his position in the Slug Club and looks down his
aristocratic nose at Theo, who was excluded because his father is a
Death Eater.) 

I don't think Blaise will prove important in Book 7, but Theo has been
waiting in the wings since the first indirect reference to him as the
"weedy" Slytherin boy who could see Thestrals. And he was important
enough to JKR that she created an unpublished scene between him and
Draco that she mentioned on her website.

I think his absence from the scene on the Hogwarts Express is
important. Although he does, IIRC, exchange sniggering glances with
Draco in NEWT Potions, he is not his close friend and is not involved
in Draco's desperate attempt to repair the vanishing cabinet. Why not?
We know he's intelligent (he made it to NEWT Potions and JKR has
indicated it on her site) and his father is a Death Eater. He doesn't
seem to realize that Draco's father ordered the other DEs to abandon
*his* father when he was injured in the DoM. Is Draco afraid that Theo
will steal his "glory"? Is he unsure of Theo's loyalties because theo
himself is not yet a Death Eater? We really don't know.

Theo is a "weedy" or "stringy" and intelligent loner (shades of the
young Severus Snape). His mother is dead (perhaps he saw her die since
he can see Thestrals). His father, the oldest DE in the graveyard
scene, seems to have been one of Voldemort's original followers, along
with a Dolohov who may or may not be the sadistic Antonin, a Rosier
who is probably the father of Evan Rosier, a member of Bellatrix's
Slytherin gang who died fighting Mad Eye Moody and took off a chunk of
his nose, and a Mulciber who may or may ot be the one who specializes
in the Imperius Curse and was with Nott Sr., Antonin Dolohov, and
Lucius Malfoy at the MoM (HBP 444). (On a side note, I think the Avery
and Lestrange mentioned in Slughorn's memory are the fathers of the
current Avery and of Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, respectively.)

What all this shows, apparently, is that DE membership runs in
families, so the question of whether Theo Nott becomes a DE is, I
think, significant. Blaise Zabini is not tempted by the proposition,
but Theo might be. On the one hand, his father is one of the original
Death Eaters, and he probably doesn't know how shabbily his father has
been treated. On the other hand, his father is now either in St.
Mungo's or Azkaban, depending on the extent of his injuries at the
MoM. The prospect of such a future for himself, given his presumed
talents and intelligence, probably is not appealing. A lot could
depend on where and with the virtually orphaned Theo spent the summer
between his fifth and sixth years. Like Draco and all the sixth years,
he is still just sixteen when he returns to Hogwarts on september 1.
Surely he has not been on his own all summer?

If there's a character who can go either way, DE or not DE, a
character who is less shallow than Draco Malfoy and whose choice will
depend on more than vengeance against "Potter" and a badly distorted
sense of family honor and the "glory" of recognition by Voldemort,
it's Theo Nott.

I don't think it's coincidence that we've been given a passing
acquaintance with him, including the detail that he can see Thestrals.
 I wish we could have seen him interacting with Snape, but I suppose
that would reveal too much about both of them.

Carol, wondering if Theo writes improved formulas for potions or
invented spells in the margins of his textbook