The DADA jinx and its victims (Was:The best reason for Dumbledore to trust

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 137961

Note: this is a repost with a new subject line. I'm deleting the original

CathyD wrote:
<snip> Harry didn't kill Quirrell. Voldemort did. Quirrell was still
alive and fighting Harry for the Stone when Dumbledore arrived.

Gatta responded:
> The book doesn't really make it clear what happened. The impression
I got was that Quirrel died of contact with Harry, sort of passive
> killing but killing nonetheless. In any case, we end up with a live
> Harry and a dead Quirrel, which in most circumstances would take
some explaining ("I dunno, officer, he just sort of evilled to death...").
<snip>

Carol takes a deep breath and plunges in:
Although SS/PS is admittedly vague about Quirrell's death (unlike the
film, which makes Harry directly responsible), Voldemort indicates in
GoF that Quirrell died when he (Vapormort) left his (Quirrell's) body.
This fate corresponds with that of the animals Vapormort possesses. He
uses up their life and energy keeping himself alive just as a parasite
kills its host. In fact, he is exactly that, a parasite. He has taken
what he can from Quirrell and discards him when he is through.

However, I'd like to propose a slightly different twist regarding
Quirrell's fate and tie it to that of the other DADA professors. While
Quirrell is killed by the mechanism I've described, he is also, like
all the other DADA professors, a victim of the DADA jinx (which
appears, actually, to be a rather sinister curse considering the grim
fates of the DADA teachers we've seen so far). I would even go so far
as to say that Quirrell is killed either by the will of Voldemort
acting through the DADA curse, or by the curse itself, which seems to
have taken on a life or mind of its own. (Mr. Weasley warns us about
objects that seem able to think for themselves. What about an abstract
entity like a class that destroys everyone who teaches it?)

We first hear of the jinx in SS/PS when Percy tells the new
Griffindors about it, also correctly informing us that Snape applies
for the DADA course every year (why he would do so knowing that it's
jinxed is another question, which I've explored in message 137706).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/137706

Percy's information is confirmed in GoF (Snape applying for the post
every year) and HBP (the jinx on the position is real, not a rumor
spread by students). Moreover, the jinx (or curse) has been placed by
Voldemort himself and has been in place since he applied for the
position a second time (at a point when he had made some but not all
of his Horcruxes). If my math and memory are correct, he's about 35
years old at this time, which would make Snape a child of about three.
(Harry, of course, is about eighteen years in the future.) Professor
Merrythought has, we presume, long since retired and we don't know who
held the position between her retirement, ca. 1945, and the placement
of the jinx, ca. 1963. We also don't know what happened to the victims
of the jinx in the long years between the placement of the jinx and
Harry's arrival at Hogwarts in 1991--except for one.

Young professor Quirrell teaches DADA for what we must assume is one
year and then gets the wild idea of pursuing vampires and other Dark
creatures in Albania, exactly the place where Vapormort is hiding.
Since we know that the jinx is at work and is real, this desire must
be its manifestation the first time he teaches the course. It draws
him from the seemingly safe haven of Hogwarts right into the not yet
visible arms of Voldemort.

Quirrell is gone for a year, during which some unknown teacher bravely
or foolishly teaches the course. We don't know what happens to him or
her, but the position is again open when Quirrell reapplies (as does
Snape, but DD for whatever reason, and I've already presented my views
on the subject, chooses Quirrell). This time Quirrell has brought his
own doom with him. Somehow (and this is a question I can't explore
here but am curious about) he has brought Vapormort back to England
with him, perhaps as a deformed infant or concealed inside Nagini. We
don't know and it isn't relevant here.

It's important to note, however, that Voldemort is *not yet inside
Quirrell's head* when Quirrell is given the position. He looks
perfectly normal, if understandably pale and nervous, when he shakes
hands with Harry in the Leaky Cauldron. He's introduced as Harry's
DADA instructor, so he already has the position. That same day,
probably immediately after Hagrid takes the Sorceror's Stone out of
the vault, Quirrell tries to rob the same vault and is punished by his
failure to steal it by having Voldemort possess him. Next time we see
Quirrell, he is wearing the purple turban to disguise the face in the
back of his head. The DADA jinx has manifested itself though no one
except Snape suspects what Quirrell is concealing. It's only a matter
of time (a three-term school year, of course) before Auirrell fails
his master again and meets his doom. Voldemort and the curse operate
in tandem, whether Voldemort consciously wills it or not, to bring
Quirrell down, to utterly and permanently destroy him. His loyalty
means nothing to Voldemort, who cares no more about his followers than
about his enemies.

Lockhart is a less clearcut case of the link between the DADA jinx and
Voldemort's will as he's only indirectly linked to Voldemort (in the
form of Diary!Tom) because as the DADA teacher, he ought to be trying
to solve the Riddle (sorry!) of the Chamber of Secrets. He is not a DE
or in any sense a servant of Voldemort, only a fool and a pretender.
He, too, brings his doom with him in the sense that his masquerade is
bound to be exposed, especially with Snape watching him (as he also
watched, followed, and attempted to thwart Quirrell). Perhaps Lockhart
dooms himself when he brags that he knows just the countercurse that
could have saved Mrs. Norris (who of course is only petrified, not
dead). He certainly exposes himself as a fraud at this point, in front
of Snape, who later makes a fool of him using Expelliarmus in DADA and
informs him when Ginny Weasley has been taken into the Chamber of
Secrets that his moment has come, a wittily sarcastic remark that is
supported by Flitwick and McGonagall.

But the agent of Lockhart's undoing is neither Snape nor Voldemort (in
the form of Diary!Tom, waiting in the Chamber with the possessed and
dying Ginny), but Ron Weasley's wand, which is broken at the beginning
of the school year when the Flying Ford Anglia lands in the Whomping
Willow. Lockhart attempts an evil action (wiping out Ron's and Harry's
memories and letting Ginny die) and immediately receives poetic
justice when the wand backfires and wipes out his own memory. The DADA
curse, or the will of Voldemort acting through it, has shaped a
punishment appropriate for him using an instrument, the broken wand,
that has been waiting to do the job since the beginning of the term.

Lupin, too, brings his doom with him. He is hiding secrets--not merely
that he is a werewolf, which Dumbledore and Snape know quite well, as
does Madam Pomfrey, but that his friend Sirius Black, whom he believes
to be a murderer and traitor but still loves as the friend of his
youth, is an animagus who knows how to get into Hogwarts using the
Whomping Willow. Lupin confiscates the Marauders Map from Harry but
does not give it to Dumbledore because it would give away what he's
concealing about Sirius Black. When Black enters Hogwarts twice, first
slashing the Fat Lady's portrait and then slashing Ron's bedcurtains
with a twelve-inch knife (intent on murder, but not of Ron), Snape
suspects that Lupin has let him in, and yet Snape keeps his mouth shut
and continues to make Lupin's wolfbane potion "perfectly,", and all
seems well while Lupin dutifully takes it. Then, near the end of term,
Lupin sees Peter Pettigrew on the Marauders Map and rushes out to the
Shrieking Shack. Snape, coming in with the potion, sees Lupin (but not
Pettigrew) on the map. Knowing that Lupin is about to turn into a
werewolf and guessing that the "murderer" Black is in the Shrieking
Shack, he follows him, leaving the steaming and frothing potion behind.

But what possessed the level-headed Lupin to rush out, forgetting his
potion on a full moon night, leaving the map (which he should have
turned in to Dumbldore) where Snape or anyone else could see it? And
why has Sirius chosen this night to haul poor Ron, with Scabbers in
his pocket, into the Shrieking Shack, just as Lupin happens to be
looking at the map? In my view, it's the DADA curse manifesting
itself. The connection with Voldemort is there in the form of his
"servant," Peter Pettigrew, whom Lupin sees on the map, who appears in
Trelawney's prophecy, and who will escape to resurrect Voldemort, in
part because of Lupin's transformation.

The agent in Lupin's case is the Marauders Map, which Lupin helped to
make years before, and which is placed in Harry's hands early in the
year. It's confiscated by Snape, who knows perfectly well that Lupin
is connected with it (and may suspect that it's a map) and calls Lupin
into his office to look at it. Lupin claims it, keeping it from Harry,
but is too weak-willed to turn it in to Dumbledore and confess what he
suspects--that Sirius, in dog form, is hiding in the Shrieking Shack
and using the secret passageway, one of seven shown on the map, to get
into the school.

Near the end of the term, the map betrays Lupin, one of its makers, by
revealing the supposedly dead Peter Pettigrew, another maker, at the
Whomping Willow. Lupin forgets everything--the potion, the full moon,
the map itself--in the sudden joyful realization that Sirius is
innocent. Snape, bringing in the potion, also sees the map, but does
not see Pettigrew and consequently has no such epiphany. He knows only
that Lupin, who has not had his potion and is about to transform into
a werewolf, is rushing to the Shrieking Shack to join the friend Snape
thinks is a murderer. Snape is knocked unconscious and Lupin
transforms, endangering three children and inadvertently enabling
Wormtail to escape. Snape "outs" him, but with or without Snape, he
cannot in good conscience keep his position, nor can Dumbledore allow
him to stay. The DADA curse has taken another victim. (On a side note,
Umbridge passes her anti-werewolf legislation just at this same time,
perhaps another manifestation of the jinx for Lupin, who is sicker and
shabbier each time we see him.)

I see that I'm going into too much detail and I apologize to anyone
who has followed me this far. Fortunately, I haven't given much
thought to the DADA curse in years four and five. I'll just say that
the real Moody, aknown enemy of Voldemort, is Imperio'd by Voldemort
and his servants (including Wormtail) before he even gets to the
school, the swiftest manifestation ever of the DADA curse (agent: his
own trunk). And Crouch!Moody, the fanatically loyal servant of
Voldemort who takes his place, also falls victim to the curse, having
his identity and crimes exposed and his soul sucked out just at the
end of the year, following the pattern established by Quirrell,
Lockhart, and Lupin. He in fact tells us what he has done (using the
third person) at the beginning of the year, perhaps setting up his own
fall. The agent, of course, is the Triwizard cup that he has turned
into a portkey. (I've given even less thought to Umbridge or how she
shapes her own fall, which of course takes the shape of unknown
punishments by the centaur that rob her of what passes for her mind,
with Hermione rather than Snape playing a key role in her fall. I
haven't thought about the agent. Perhaps there isn't one. It ought to
be her horrible blood-drawing quill, but it doesn't seem to be.)

But Snape as DADA teacher fits the pattern beautifully. He takes a
post he has supposedly wanted for fifteen years, knowing that it's
jinxed. He has in one way or another contributed to the fall of the
six previous DADA teachers (he provides real veritaserum to expose
Fake!Moody and fake veritaserum to thwart Umbridge, and he continues
to report to Dumbledore during her tenure). Now it's his own turn and
perhaps he thinks he can defeat the jinx on the position (which he
probably doesn't know is a curse placed by Voldemort himself).
Instead, almost as soon as he accepts the DADA position, the curse
manifests itself in the form of the Unbreakable Vow, directly linked
with Voldemort's plan to punish the Malfoys and perhaps to kill
Dumbledore. Through pride or folly or some other fault within himself,
Snape agrees to take the vow and is trapped by the unanticipated third
provision to "do the deed" if Draco fails.

Whether Voldemort planned to trap Snape or whether Snape is trapped by
Voldemort's will acting indirectly through the DADA curse doesn't
matter. Just as Vapormort entered Quirrell's head soon after he
reapplied for the DADA, Snape takes the vow before he begins what he
must know will be his last year at Hogwarts, and he is bound to his
doom by the serpents of fire winding around his hands. It's unclear
whether Snape understands that the curse has struck, manifesting
itself through the vow, or even that the vow could lead to
Dumbledore's death. But he does know that if he is not careful, the
vow will lead to his own death or Draco's or to some other terrible
consequence desired by the Dark Lord.

Through its agent, the Unbreakable Vow, the curse on the DADA position
has doomed him either to death or to darkness. Voldemort, who cares no
more for his own servants (Quirrell and Fake!Moody) than for his
enemies (Lupin and the real Moody) has found another victim for the
curse he placed so many years before. If Snape was in fact loyal to
Dumbledore, whom he must kill or die himself, accomplishing nothing,
he is the most tragic victim of them all.

On a side note, I would like to see Snape and Lupin form a common
cause against Voldemort, understanding that through the curse, he has
used their own weaknesses against them, with terrible consequences for
them both. I don't know whether Snape, whose sins are far greater than
Lupin's, can face the truth about himself and show genuine remorse. I
don't know whether Lupin has the integrity to forgive him or the
courage to join with him, knowing that Snape's skill and power are
greater than his and that Snape, if anyone, can destroy the Horcruxes
and pave the way to Voldemort's fall. But they are both victims of the
DADA curse, both victims of Voldemort in more ways than I have
detailed here, and that, to me, would be a very satisfying resolution
of the Snape and Lupin threads, and maybe the only way to end the
curse he placed on the DADA position.

Carol, hoping that Sherry, at least, made it all the way through this
post and that I did justice to the part about Lupin