Braaaains! (In the Department of Mysteries)

[athene42100]

No: HPFGUIDX 129392

I just came up with a crazy theory.

Wouldn't it be easier for Death Eaters to sneak into St. Mungo's and
AK Broderick Bode?  ...well, let's assume they have some sort of wards
up to detect that kind of thing.  Couldn't they have sent someone in
Polyjuiced as a Healer or something and poisoned him?  Why did he have
to be *strangled?*

Strangulation causes brain death, which causes, you know, regular-type
death.  But it's the brain death I'm more interested in here.

Remember the big tank of brains in the Department of Mysteries?  (I
love the Department of Mysteries - it's got so many puns made real:
it's the site of the Ministry's Think Tank, and if you're not careful
you could go Beyond the Veil or even fall in Love.)  Well, they must
get the brains from *somewhere.*  If something that really thinks
doesn't appear to have a brain, it's sort of suspicious - remember
Arthur's comment about not trusting things if you don't know where
they keep their brains?

My theory is this: the Department of Mysteries takes the very best
brains fresh from their very best (but dead) researchers, and plops
them into the tank to form a sort of collective
intelligence/supercomputer thingy.  The brains retain at least *some*
of what they learned.  So casting Imperius on an Unspeakable and then
killing them is a dangerous, dangerous thing to do unless you have
some way of making their brain completely useless.

Enter the Devil's Snare.

~Kaesa, who doesn't think JKR planned that, but thinks it would be
neat anyway.